- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Full strength Email Clients.
by Steven Herod 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hello, I'm in search of an *EASY TO USE* Internet Email client software that uses full strength (outside US export restriction) RSA encryption. It would be used for end to end encryption of Patient Pathology results, hence the need for "full strength". Any pointers to sites of interest? Best Regards Steven Herod Computer Systems Officer Med-E-Serv Connect, a division of CITEC

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Re: Embarrass a Marylander, Go to Jail
by tmcghan＠mail.bcpl.lib.md.us 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

in a message allegedly from: Robert Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> this appeared... > A Maryland bill that would make it illegal to send "annoying" or > "embarrassing" e-mail was introduced this week by Democratic General > Assembly member Samuel Rosenberg. {snip} > "Never attribute to conspiracy what can be explained by stupidity." -- Jerry Pournelle As a marylander, in particular, a baltimoron, I am both embarrassed and annoyed that these legislative bozos have the unmitigated gall to expend time and energy on pursuits such as these. Perhaps they feel that our state attorney general needs to earn his excessive salary by attempting to defend this constitutionally indefensible mental excrement. Did the defeat of CDA not resonate?

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Re: My Departure, Moderation, and "Ownership of the List"
by ISP_Ratings 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote: > > ichudov(a)algebra.com (Igor Chudov @ home) writes: > >> Adam Back wrote: >> > >> > Perhaps it is time to reconsider the benefits of alt.cypherpunks. (As >> > an aside, it is ironic that John Gilmore was the guy who started the >> > alt.* USENET hierarchy, specifically to facilitate freedom of speech). >> > >> >> An interesting idea. > >John Gilmore of EFF is a liar and a hypocrite who likes to claim credit for >other people's accomplishments. Well EFF itself is a lie--the were very well exposed by Wired Mag. a while back as being nothing more than a corporate whore. They represent the interests of owners not consumers--the ACLU has been very open in their critisism of the EFF in this regard. A large corporation waves some money in front of their noses and tells them to bend over you can be sure they'll bend over. Respectable free speech advocates do not associate with EFF. >He had nothing whatsoever to do with the creation of the alt.* Usenet >hierarchy. Gilmore is a liar and a censor. > Is Mr. Gilmore making this claim? >On the other hand, creating an alt.cypherpunks sounds like a more robust >idea than yet another mailing list. And you could merely post this mailing list publically in the alt group of your choice--I find it interesting at times but not worth responding to in general since freedom of expressiion is not a given. Steve

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IBM's SecureWay Key Recovery technology
by Marshall Clow 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From <http://www.ibm.com/Security/html/prkeyrec.html>: >At the RSA Conference, IBM announced the details of its highly >anticipated SecureWay key recovery technology. IBM is developing this >technology in response to market demands for exportable strong >encryption required to advance the growth of global e-business. >[ yada yada yada snipped ] I attended this presentation. Basically, what they do is to add two packets to the "channel setup process", one that depends only on the coorespondents, the other that contains the information about this particular session. A problem with this, as I pointed out to the presenters, is that the first packet can be trivially used for traffic analysis. The eavesdropper may not be able to determine who is cooresponding, but they can tell if it is the same people as in a previous conversation. >From <http://www.ibm.com/security/html/wp_keyrec2.html> >In order to minimize the preparation overhead, the recovery information >is prepared in two phases: one phase is independent of the particular >session/archive key being prepared; the second phase is dependent on the >particular key and session parameters. The first phase, which uses >public-key encryption, can be shared across multiple invocations of key >recovery preparation, thus reducing overhead. The public-key encryptions >can be stored for repeated use. > As you can see, IBM suggests cacheing the contents of the first packet, so that you don't have to recalculate it each time. Imagine how easy traffic analysis would be if the identification packets were identical instead of just related. -- Marshall Marshall Clow Aladdin Systems <mailto:mclow@mailhost2.csusm.edu> Warning: Objects in calendar are closer than they appear.

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Re: New X-Ray Imager
by Lucky Green 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:38 AM 2/4/97 -0500, Adam Shostack wrote: > >| A poll last week by the Los Angeles Times found that a majority of people -- >| 58 percent -- said they would curtail some civil liberties if it would help >| thwart terrorism. Thirteen percent said it would depend on what rights were >| at stake. The poll didn't ask people to single out any rights. > > Its worth noting the 'if it would help thwart terrorism.' It is irrelevant if terrorism is indeed be thwarted. The public does not require this to happen. All that matters is to generate the *perception* of increased security, not to increase security itself. -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred "I do believe that where there is a choice only between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence." Mahatma Gandhi

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Re: Dissolving Choke Points
by Lucky Green 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:36 PM 2/3/97 -0800, Peter Hendrickson wrote: >What I have seen is a pretty complete elimination of the signal that >was there. Some might argue that this is "just" because Tim stopped >posting. But so what? The result of moderation was the elimination >of signal. Nonsense. The signal had left long before the moderation began. The steepest drop in signal (not S/N ratio) was between shortly before Perry left and Vulis had completed his takeover. Signal is cause by signal generators. Most top signal generators, other than Tim, had left because of pollution caused by the likes of Vulis, aga, and his homophonic boyfriends. Moderation has nothing to do with the loss of signal other than that signal from Tim was lost. And while I appreciated Tim's essays, they were never the sole source of signal on the list. Tim did not even provide the majority of signal. "Best individual contributor", sure. -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred "I do believe that where there is a choice only between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence." Mahatma Gandhi

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IBM's SecureWay Key Recovery technology
by Marshall Clow 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From <http://www.ibm.com/Security/html/prkeyrec.html>: >At the RSA Conference, IBM announced the details of its highly >anticipated SecureWay key recovery technology. IBM is developing this >technology in response to market demands for exportable strong >encryption required to advance the growth of global e-business. >[ yada yada yada snipped ] I attended this presentation. Basically, what they do is to add two packets to the "channel setup process", one that depends only on the coorespondents, the other that contains the information about this particular session. A problem with this, as I pointed out to the presenters, is that the first packet can be trivially used for traffic analysis. The eavesdropper may not be able to determine who is cooresponding, but they can tell if it is the same people as in a previous conversation. >From <http://www.ibm.com/security/html/wp_keyrec2.html> >In order to minimize the preparation overhead, the recovery information >is prepared in two phases: one phase is independent of the particular >session/archive key being prepared; the second phase is dependent on the >particular key and session parameters. The first phase, which uses >public-key encryption, can be shared across multiple invocations of key >recovery preparation, thus reducing overhead. The public-key encryptions >can be stored for repeated use. > As you can see, IBM suggests cacheing the contents of the first packet, so that you don't have to recalculate it each time. Imagine how easy traffic analysis would be if the identification packets were identical instead of just related. -- Marshall Marshall Clow Aladdin Systems <mailto:mclow@mailhost2.csusm.edu> Warning: Objects in calendar are closer than they appear.

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Re: Moderation, Tim, Sandy, me, etc. * Strong crypto == DES?!
by E. Allen Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"gnu(a)toad.com" "John Gilmore" 4-FEB-1997 12:20:22.10 >Tim, the Cypherpunks have chosen to follow Sandy's lead for this >month. I'll admit I made it easy for them, but the results are >conclusive. There are 1311 addresses in the cypherpunks list today; >42 in the unedited list; and 19 in the flames list. Forty people >cared enough to read every posting; the other thousand either wanted >to try the experiment -- or didn't care enough to send an email >message. Which, as we all know, is a very low threshold. You're making an invalid assumption... namely that people who stayed on the moderated list are neccessarily wanting it to be the main list. This isn't the case with me, for instance. I'd also point out that some of us - including me - were taking the time to take a look at what happened with the moderated list. On the one hand, it did result in a decrease in the trash messages... on the other hand, it also drove away 1+ good posters (TCMay for one). As I've said before, I might wind up going with Sandy's (or some other) filtered list. But changing the name (effectively, to cypherpunks-unedited) was a bad idea. >I'm definitely bugged by the community's attitude toward my >"censorship". Rather than being glad that someone, anyone, was doing >something about the major problem on the list, 99% of the reaction was >to create even more ill-considered, emotional flamage. *I* didn't >make the signal/noise get worse at that point -- *you-all* did. I can see how you might ignore objections from those who did make the signal/noise get worse... but from those who didn't? _I_ tried to help you by letting you & Sandy know when something was going wrong. >Perhaps at that point I should have shut down the list, as Lucky is >now suggesting. "Asking the list what to do" was clearly not a useful >option. Sandy cared enough about the community to make some concrete >suggestions to me about how to get the list back on track. They >involved a lot more work than the previous setup. I told him if he >was willing to do the work, we could try it. As Dale suggests, I >wasn't about to waste my time reading the whole list in real time and >passing judgement on the postings. Sandy was, for a month. I (and others, I believe) are gratified by y'all's attempts to help. I just think that you went about it the wrong way. >Start a mailing list on another site! Move this list to somewhere! [...] >The experiment will be over in a few weeks. Who's going to take over >deciding how to run the list, and running it? Would you be willing to help in starting up a distributed list? That would appear to solve at least some of the toad.com problems (keeping it running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week) with which I am sympathetic. >If you want to help organize what I'll call the `progressive crypto >community', for lack of a better term, then please do. Otherwise, in >the immortal words of Lazarus Long, "PIPE DOWN!". I'm willing to help the _libertarian_ crypto community, to the limit allowed by my available resources (I'm a grad student). Organize? I'm not so sure to what degree that's helping. Progressive? I'm not a liberal. Slight but meaningful difference in terms. >PS: Can we talk about crypto too? It's clear from the last few days >of press releases that the pro-GAK forces are again working to confuse >novices into thinking that two very different things are the same >thing. Last time it was "public key infrastructure" and "key >recovery". This time it's "strong crypto" and "56-bit DES". What >should we do about this? Educate the public? The public won't listen until 56-bit DES is broken; then, they can be told that "somebody broke the cryptography used by banks" and they might listen. In other words, what can be done is supporting DES-breaking efforts (ideally, via the collection of different possible keys and their indicators, as someone had mentioned earlier - sorry, I'm a biologist, not a mathematician, so I've forgotten the actual terms. It was something that would essentially enable the near-instant breaking of _any_ DES code after the competion of the project. My apologies if I've gotten mixed up on this). -Allen

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BA Crypto Machine Photos
by jproc＠bellglobal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dear BA'ers, Recently, I acquired some BA crypto machine photos courtesy of the Canadian Security Establishment. If anyone wants full size, selected, JPEG copies of these photos, please let me know and I can send them as attached files to E-mail. As a reminder, there are two stories beginning with the same file name in the BA archives which accompany the photos. KL7.JPG Colour 108 kbytes KWR37.JPG B & W 51 kbytes BTW, does anyone know the meaning of 'order wire mode' in the context of a crypto broadcast? This mode is found in the KWR-37 online crypto receiver. Please send all photo requests or responses via private E-mail. Regards, ------------------------------------- Jerry Proc VE3FAB E-mail: jproc(a)bellglobal.com HMCS Haida Naval Museum Toronto, Ontario 'Looking for a 'AN/SRC-501' -------------------------------------

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Re: concerning Ben Franklin
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This is one of the point that I address in my article in the February 1997 issue of "Internet Underground" magazine (to which I am a contributing editor). Here's an excerpt, since the magazine is just starting to hit the stands. --- The debate swirling through Capitol Hill conference rooms and the corridors of the White House revolves around one basic question: What role should the government play in regulating encryption? The founding fathers might be startled by the byzantine rules. After all, some revolutionaries were cryptographers themselves. Benjamin Franklin in 1781 crafted a substitution cipher based on a 682-character French phrase. James Madison created a code replacing words with two- and three-digit numbers that he used until 1793. But by far the most remarkable cryptologist of the Revolutionary War was the author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, who between 1790 and 1800 invented a cipher system so far ahead of its time that it remained in use even into the late 20th century. --- The Codebreakers is also a good source. -Declan >I was reading one of the posts in the thread reguarding sone stolen object >in Miami, the one reffering to the locks of the boxes, and it got me thinking. >Ben Franklin was a revolutionary, scientist, inventor, publisher, statesman, >and bookburner (according to F451). Perhaps he should be considered to be a >cypherpunk, not that he necessarily knew anything about crypto, but because >he was interested in many of the same ideals. It is my belief that were he >alive today, he would be on this list. If the work of fiction referred to >above, and in another recent post, is accurate in its reference to Franklin, >then he would seem to have had the same solution to net pollution, burn it. >Rather than considering Ben Franklin the first fireman, I would like to >think of him as an early breed of cypherpunk. By this I consider cypherpunk >to be interested in the subject, and its outcome, and a cryptographer to be >just one faction of cypherpunk. Merely my opinion. >Does anyone know whether or not Mr. Franklin may have played with code as >well? All of my sources were assimilated into my understanding of the man >several years ago, and at the time crypto was less in the public eye than it >is now. ------------------------- The Netly News Network Washington Correspondent http://netlynews.com/

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